TURKEY: PARLIAMENT FEELING ITS OATS

C O N F I D E N T I A L ANKARA 001419 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/05/2013 TAGS: PGOV PREL TU SUBJECT: TURKEY: PARLIAMENT FEELING ITS OATS REF: A. ANKARA 1350 ¶B. ANKARA 808 (C) Classified by DCM Robert S. Deutsch. Reason: 1.5(b)(d) ¶1. (C) Building on the March 1 defeat of the government proposal regarding U.S. and Turkish troop deployments to Iraq (reftel),Parliamentary leaders and other influential M.P.s are sketching out an ambitious agenda that will, if carried out, aggrandize the institution and make it a more permanent, and independently powerful, policymaking organ. -- Emin Sirin, Deputy Chairman of the Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee (and a notorious "no" voter on March 1), characterized the vote to us on March 4 as marking the rise of Parliament and the emergence of an "understanding" with the opposition CHP. As a result, Parliament is preparing constitutional amendments that will enhance its ability to act more independently of the government. -- Salih Kapusuz, the powerful AK Parliamentary Group Deputy Chief, elaborated on March 5 that the constitutional and other legal changes now quietly being prepared by AK include promoting: 1) greater "real" Parliamentary oversight of GOT decisionmaking and areas, such as military budgeting, long left relatively free from civilian scrutiny; and 2) greater local-level government control of its own activities. Kapusuz described the AK vision as one that would help transform Parliament into something more along the lines of the U.S. Congress in its power to set and control the legislative agenda. -- Turhan Comez, AK leader Erdogan's former Chef de Cabinet and now an M.P. representing Balikesir, noted to us March 5 that Parliament has "self-promoted" its role since the Nov. 3 elections. He intimated that, given AK's huge majority and the fact that there is no national election necessary until 2007, M.P.s are freer now than ever before to act as they see fit. "The culture of one-man rule over a party is beginning to change," Comez added. -- Opposition CHP polling guru and senior M.P. Bulent Tanla told us March 5 that "this marked the first time in recent memory that discipline in a dominant party had broken down." (Fellow CHPer Emin Koc noted that this unravelling was due in part to non-party organizations -- the tarikats -- that provisionally support AK.) Years from now, Tanla predicted, people will look back on March 1 as "the beginning" of Parliament's ascendancy. -------------- Comment -------------- ¶2. (C) Some legislators are clearly feeling their oats since the Parliament's ambitious Speaker, Bulent Arinc, helped engineer the failure of the Government's March 1 proposal. While that foray in power politics was in part an intramural affair aimed at rival elements within the AK Party apparatus, it was clearly a watershed in Turkish legislative history. Whether this new independent streak can be sustained is an open question of considerable significance. This is so particularly given: 1) what we expect will be the eventual anti-Arinc counterattack from Erdogan, Gul or both; and 2) the almost certain negative reaction (particularly involving military budgeting) to such a parliamentary power play by a TGS already viscerally opposed to AK and to Arinc. PEARSON